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Updated: June 20, 2025
Variations from the list as given also occur. So Ashurbanabal calls the seventh month, Elul, the month of 'the king of gods Ashur, while Sargon assigns the fourth month to the 'servant of Gibil, the fire-god, by which Nin-gishzida is meant, and the third month he calls the month of "the god of brick structures."
At a later period, Nin-gishzida is entirely absorbed by Ninib, but the Adapa legend affords us a glimpse of the god still occupying an independent, though already inferior, position. The Babylonian calendar designates the fifth month as sacred to Gishzida, while the fourth month is named for Tammuz.
Of this group of deities, Tammuz and Nin-gishzida are the most important. In the Adapa legend, it will be recalled, they are stationed as guardians in heaven. As solar deities, they properly belong there. Like Nergal, they have been transferred to the nether world; and in the case of all three, the process that led to the change appears to have been the same.
The introduction of Tammuz and Gishzida introduces a widely spread nature-myth into the story. Gishzida is identical with Nin-gishzida, a solar deity whom we came across in the old Babylonian pantheon. Tammuz similarly is a solar deity. Both represent local solar cults.
The trees blossom, bear fruit, and then decay; the fields are clothed in glory, and then shorn of their strength. The decay of vegetation was popularly figured as due to the weakness of the god who produced the fertility. Tammuz has been deceived by Ishtar; Nin-gishzida has been carried off to the lower world.
The four succeeding months are parceled out among deities closely connected with one another, Ninib, Nin-gishzida, Ishtar, and Shamash. Of these, Ninib and Nin-gishzida are solar deities. Ninib, as the morning sun, symbolizes the approach of the summer season, while Nin-gishzida, another solar deity, represents an advance in this season.
Tammuz, Nin-gishzida, and the like are held enthralled by Allatu, and remain in the nether world against their will; but if Allatu chooses as her consort a 'god of healing, she must have been viewed as a goddess who could at times, at least, be actuated by kindly motives.
He is a solar deity identified in the theological system of the Babylonians with Nergal, but originally distinct and in all probability one of the numerous local solar deities of Babylonia like Nin-girsu and Nin-gishzida, Ishum and others, whose rôles are absorbed by one or the other of the four great solar deities, Shamash, Marduk, Ninib, and Nergal.
Tammuz, of whose position in this pantheon we have already had occasion to speak, is the god of spring vegetation. Another solar deity, Nin-gishzida, who is associated in the Adapa legend with Tammuz, is the deity who presides over the growth of trees. En-meshara, who also belongs to the court of Nergal and Allatu, appears to represent vegetation in general.
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